Abstract

070816database_rights-short On the treatment of the sui generis database rights in Version 3.0 of the Creative Commons licenses. Background: Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases (the "Database Directive") created a new basis for the protection of databases ("sui generis database protection") not previously recognized under copyright law. The database directive has by now been implemented by the 25 member states of the EU (plus some of the countries such as Norway that are part of the European Economic Area - EEA). Outside of Europe there is no sui generis protection of Databases. In some countries (for example Germany) the database directive has been implemented as part of the national copyright act, while others (such as the Netherlands) have chosen to implement via a separate act (in this case the database act). The lawmakers of the European Union decided that in order to provide greater protection to collections of information they should have a unified legal protection for databases. To this end, they created a sui generis right called database right. The database right lasts for 15 years under this regime, but can be extended if the database is updated. Database rights prevent copying of substantial parts of a database (including frequent extraction of insubstantial parts). However unlike copyright the protection of the database right is not over the form of expression of information but of the information itself [source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_rights]. Prior to Version 3.0, some localized and translated versions of the Creative Commons licenses (Belgium, Netherlands, France and Germany) contained references to national legislation passed pursuant to the Database Directive, by defining a "work" to include databases protected by these laws. Most other European CC licenses simply did not mention database rights at all. This situation was identified as one of the issues

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